Politics and Culture

November 30, 2016

Terry Glavin writes from Canada, but it applies here too: all those liberal leftists for whom Castro was and must remain a hero for standing up to Uncle Sam. So he was a bit of a tyrant. Well, what about the Cuban healthcare system? The education? And anyway, what about US atrocities? Who are we to criticise?

The descent into cacophony proceeds, thus: “Well, what about that time Stephen Harper offered his condolences to the king of Saudi Arabia?” “Sure, but what about Guantanamo?” “Well, what about Cuba’s great health-care system and its wonderfully high literacy rates?” “Sure Fidel may have been authoritarian but what about how he pulled Cuba out of poverty?” That sort of thing. It’s been deafening. There’s a term for it.

By the late 1940s, the Soviets had become adept at a cheap subject-changing trick that came to be called “whataboutism,” a propaganda dodge employed to defend against and deflect anti-communist arguments that relied upon, say, the death by starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants overseen by Joseph Stalin. Soviet dissidents developed a descriptive term for it all their own: U nich negrov linchuyut (“Over there they lynch Negroes”).

The feint got stale after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1989, but immediately after the atrocities of Sept. 11, a toxic form of “whataboutism” entrenched itself as the most commonplace rhetorical style of the liberal-left, and it was to remain embedded in leftish “discourse” in all the turmoils that followed. If you wanted to situate the precise time and place this began, you could do worse than put it at Oct. 18 of that disorienting year, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at a lecture delivered by the famous left-wing intellectual Noam Chomsky.

Over the course of an hour and 15 minutes, Chomsky’s address on the subject of the events of 9/11 (as to who was directly responsible: “It doesn’t really matter much.”) was a full-to-bursting catalogue of whataboutism. What about how beastly the United States has been to the indigenous Hawaiians? What about all the Filipinos killed by Americans? What about the conquest of the northern half of Mexico? What about the ghastly friendships the United States has cultivated over the years in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua? What about the poor Palestinians? What about all the seedy allies the United States is taking on in its so-called War on Terror?

Who are we to talk?....

Here’s the biggest problem with whataboutism. It’s not just about the Castro cult, which is so deeply embedded in the flightier sections of what has lately been described, not particularly helpfully, as “the liberal elites.”

It cripples liberal democrats. It renders liberal democrats incapable of serious self-reflection and self-criticism. It equivocates between democracy and despotism. It has wounded liberal democracy deeply, and it has allowed, just for starters, the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, and of demagogues and dangerous right-wing populists right across Europe....

Without a fire in the belly, liberalism stands for nothing, and falls for anything.

Jung Hye Sung (71), a former reporter for Korean Central News Agency, fled North Korea in 1996 and subsequently settled in South Korea. He recently sat down with Daily NK to discuss his new book: "The Unfortunate Jang Song Thaek."

The following are excerpts from the interview, which has been edited for clarity.

-You have a really interesting resume, did it help in authoring this book? Was there a special motivation behind writing it?

North Korea claims all defectors are traitors, and I wanted to make a strong argument against that, revealing the reasons behind my choice to leave North Korea after having devoted most of my life to being a loyal follower of the 'socialist system.' I wanted to show that the true traitors were Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. My family were devoted followers of the socialist system, however Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il betrayed the system and chose the path of misanthropy (contempt for humanity). I defected as I could not bear living in such conditions and wanted to show the people of both North and South Korea the true nature of the present North Korean regime....

-The novel also reveals that North Korea became a regime that focused on rank and having the right family identity, rather than the original propaganda of being a class-free society after the 25th of May, 1967. What can you tell us about that?

The 25 of May, 1967 was indeed very politically significant. The National Council announced the concluded statements made during the 15th session on that day. The statements were a veiled purge of Park Kum Chul and other members of the Kapsan faction, claiming that they harbored capitalistic, revisionism and feudal Confucianism ideologies. Although Kim Il Sung was proclaimed to be the dictator during the early years of the regime, some democratic vestiges still remained in the party. After this purge, he was firmly established as the totalitarian dictator and the last traces of democracy were stamped out, with all issues being determined by Kim Il Sung.

-Towards the end of 1980, socialist countries were overthrown with China and Vietnam preventing a revolution by introducing economic reforms. So your novel depicts Kim Jong Il as being aware of the need for reforms but was unable to do so?

To put it simply, Kim Jong Il had to shoulder the burden of capitalizing on his father’s achievements to ensure a smooth hereditary succession. Although he was aware that most of his father’s achievements were forged, he had to add further prominence to them as there were many surviving members of the Manchu anti-Japanese partisan movement who fought alongside his father. Furthermore, there were members that actually outranked his father during the anti-Japanese movement who could have been tempted to muscle in on the dictatorship as they had contributed more than Kim Il Sung to establishing the North Korean regime. As Kim Jong Il had contributed almost nothing in comparison, he was unable to introduce any reforms. In fact, he had to lend further prominence to his father’s achievements as any reformation would reveal all of Kim Il Sung’s achievements to be lies, which would jeopardize his own authority as a hereditary leader.

-The sudden execution of Jang Song Thaek in 2013 was a huge shock. While the novel depicts his execution as a result of proclaiming the need for reforms, was he actually involved in any revolutionary movement for reforms?

Yes he actually was. After the mass starvation in late 1990, North Korea’s economy looked to be a lost cause and he was assigned by Kim Jong Il to look into improving the economic situation. He presented his reforms on the 1st of July, 2002, where he stressed the need to develop the Hwanggumpyong islands. However, he faced severe obstacles due to adverse relations with China and internal strife with the Korean Workers' Party Organization Guidance Department [OGD]. No matter how influential he was, no individual could go up against the OGD.

-You have personally witnessed the purges and intense internal conflicts occurring during the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il regimes. How do you feel about the purges and factional strife in North Korea under Kim Jong Un's regime?

There seems to be no difference from the past. Although the 33-year-old Kim Jung Un proclaims his 'love' for the people and acts as the supreme leader, the OGD is pulling the strings. They are the ones who make all the plans for operations and purges. Although North Korea claims that Kim Jung Un makes all the decisions, the actual scope of all the decisions made is determined by the OGD. There have been many more purges even after the execution of Jang Song Thaek, and although it may be reported that those executions and purges are due to falling out of favor with Kim Jong Un, the final decisions lie with the OGD. They control the national party and also the political scene in North Korea.

-There has been much speculation that the present regime is in danger due to the acute increase in defections. What is your personal opinion?

I find it hard to agree with such speculation. Although the number of defectors may increase sharply, North Korea’s regime will not fall lightly. As long as the OGD exists, the regime will continue to survive. Even if there are any indications of danger toward the regime emerging, they will nip it in the bud. Jang Song Thaek’s execution was orchestrated by the organization, because they knew that any reforms would endanger the regime.

Here's my post on Jang Song Thaek's purge, three years ago - and here's the man's Wiki page.

November 29, 2016

This gallery, The Secret Lives of Drummers, by photographer Deirdre O’Callaghan, had a surprise - for me, at least. Here's Leroy Wallace, aka Horsemouth, legendary reggae drummer at Studio One in Kingston:

No surprise here, for anyone who's been paying attention. Tom Whipple in the Times (£):

Women’s health is being put at risk because researchers have ignored gender differences in the brain out of fear of being labelled sexist, scientists have claimed.

Male and female brains can respond differently to drugs for conditions such as stroke, but for years neuroscientists have feared being “a pariah in the eyes of the neuroscience mainstream” if they highlighted the difference, according to a guest editor of a special edition of the Journal of Neuroscience Research.

Most early-stage research in neuroscience concentrates on men’s brains and assumes that the results can be generalised to women. This month the journal published an edition saying that there was clear evidence that gender “matters fundamentally, powerfully, and pervasively” and that the legacy of presuming otherwise has meant that women in particular have been badly served.

It highlighted research showing that the brains of the sexes differed from the level of individual synapses to the wiring of the entire brain.

Larry Cahill, a neurobiologist from University of California Irvine, said: “The assumption has been that, once you get outside of reproductive functions, what you find in males and females is fundamentally the same and therefore there is no reason to study both sexes — and beyond that it is not good to study females as they have pesky circulating hormones,” he said.

“The last 15 to 20 years has overwhelmingly proven that assumption is false, false, false.”

Typically, neuroscientists have concentrated on male brains for early research because women’s hormones fluctuate over their menstrual cycles and so their brains are considered harder to study. Professor Cahill said that studies into major diseases were being seriously hampered as a consequence.

An example is Alzheimer’s, in which a process of cell death called apoptosis occurs differently in men and women. “Stop and think about that for a second,” Professor Cahill said. “We are talking about experiments in petri dishes, and how cells die.

“If you are coming up with drugs to deal with that you’d damn well be aware of the differences.”

However, he said that pointing out such differences remained controversial. A vocal group of scientists has questioned the value of research into sex differences, arguing that they are not significant and can be a cover for legitimising sexism. Gina Rippon from Aston University has referred to some research as “neurosexism”.

“A key issue in this area is the large areas of overlap between the scores of males and the scores of females in almost any comparison you might compare to make, to the extent that you might be forgiven for thinking that, actually, the sexes are more similar than they are different,” she said. “A continued focus on sex as a binary category, with the consequent loss of focus on the rich sources of differences within rather than between groups, would seem to be a retrograde move.”

Well of course they're more similar than they are different. That's a straw man. No one's denying it. But clearly there are differences, which need to be acknowledged and studied. To call that a "retrograde move" is to allow ideology to determine what research can and can't be allowed.

Professor Cahill, who said he had been warned off studying sex differences for fear that it would harm his career, said this was a misunderstanding. “They don’t get too upset about sex differences in the liver, heart, and microbiome,” he said. “Some people start to get itchy though when you talk about sex differences in the brain. That in turn stems from a deeply ingrained, powerful and false assumption.

“The heart of the resistance is the view that if neuroscience shows males and females are not the same in brain function, we are showing they are not equal. That is false.”

Another paper published in the journal argued that the status quo can adversely affect men, as well as women. It refers to Lazaroids, a stroke treatment that was rejected at the final hurdle because it no longer seemed to work. The authors have argued that it may well have worked — but only in men. This may have meant that at the final testing phase, when it was given to all patients, it appeared to lose half its efficacy and was wrongly rejected.

Eric Prager is the overall editor of the Journal of Neuroscience Research. He said that from now on the journal would accept submissions only if they clearly stated the sex of the subjects used, and justified the rationale. “I think more and more people are starting to agree that sex has to be considered in research,” he said. “The problem is that there are still some people that are against it completely, or that are unwilling to change.”

November 28, 2016

As a kind of companion piece to my post a couple of days back on Modern Forms, featuring the photography of Nicolas Grospierre, here's Roman Bejzak with his pictures of the architecture of Eastern Europe.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that the first photo is of the same tower block in St Petersburg that featured in that previous post - only this time, perhaps, the picture is a little more forgiving:

Bejzak, in general, doesn't pick the stand-outs or the monstrosities that so appealed to Grospierre. Indeed what's interesting about these photos is how familiar they seem to us. This is the architectural language not just of the old Socialist Eastern Europe, but of modernism everywhere. We recognise this style in many of the shopping centres, housing estates and new pedestrianised city centres here in the UK that have so transformed - disfigured - our cities over the past fifty or so years. But here we're seeing the real thing, untroubled by preservation orders or public protests. In the UK we've only been subjected to a pale echo of the full modernist project. This, on the other hand, is the proper deal - the modernist dream realised in all its concrete glory.

And, for me at least, it's not all ugly and soulless. Over the years we've come to believe that this is the language of urban desolation: of well-meaning but horribly misconceived social engineering; of a brave new world that quickly turned sour. But like so many architectural trends there's that strange process whereby what's just past quickly becomes the height of vulgarity and poor taste, to be scorned and mocked, only, with the passage of time, for there to be a gradual rehabilitation and an aesthetic re-evaluation.

Which isn't to say these places all now look wonderful, or that we were entirely wrong to reject the post-war modernist designs that town planners were so keen to inflict on us. But, really, now - now that we've said goodbye to the socialist dream and we're just left with the architecture, is there not - especially in these photos - a least a certain bleak beauty?

Bezjak has expreesed the hope that we can at least now look at these buildings with a "gaze uncontaminated by ideology." That seems a reasonable hope.

It's a slippery slope alright. Start reading someone like Sam Harris, who's critical of Islam (and, as it happens, all religions), and before you know it you're a fully-fledged alt-right racist and "Islamophobe". Fortunately a brave soul at the Guardian's CiF has come back from the realm of the damned to issue this timely - and terrifying - warning:

I am a happily married, young white man. I grew up in a happy, Conservative household. I’ve spent my entire life – save the last four months – as a progressive liberal. All of my friends are very liberal or left-leaning centrists. I have always voted Liberal Democrat or Green. I voted remain in the referendum. The thought of racism in any form has always been abhorrent to me. When leave won, I was devastated.

I was curious as to the motives of leave voters. Surely they were not all racist, bigoted or hateful? I watched some debates on YouTube. Obvious points of concern about terrorism were brought up. A leaver cited Sam Harris as a source. I looked him up: this “intellectual, free-thinker” was very critical of Islam. Naturally my liberal kneejerk reaction was to be shocked, but I listened to his concerns and some of his debates.

This, I think, is where YouTube’s “suggested videos” can lead you down a rabbit hole. Moving on from Harris, I unlocked the Pandora’s box of “It’s not racist to criticise Islam!” content. Eventually I was introduced, by YouTube algorithms, to Milo Yiannopoulos and various “anti-SJW” videos (SJW, or social justice warrior, is a pejorative directed at progressives). They were shocking at first, but always presented as innocuous criticism from people claiming to be liberals themselves, or centrists, sometimes “just a regular conservative” – but never, ever identifying as the dreaded “alt-right”....

On one occasion I even, I am ashamed to admit, very diplomatically expressed negative sentiments on Islam to my wife. Nothing “overtly racist”, just some of the “innocuous” type of things the YouTubers had presented: “Islam isn’t compatible with western civilisation.”

She was taken aback: “Isn’t that a bit … rightwing?”

I justified it: “Well, I’m more a left-leaning centrist. PC culture has gone too far, we should be able to discuss these things without shutting down the conversation by calling people racist, or bigots.”

The indoctrination was complete.

About a week before the US election, I heard one of these YouTubers use the phrase “red-pilled” – a term from the film The Matrix – in reference to people being awakened to the truth about the world and SJWs. Suddenly I thought: “This is exactly like a cult. What am I doing? I’m turning into an arsehole.”

I unsubscribed and unfollowed from everything, and told myself outright: “You’re becoming a racist. What you’re doing is turning you into a terrible, hateful person.” Until that moment I hadn’t even realised that “alt-right” was what I was becoming; I just thought I was a more open-minded person for tolerating these views....

It seemed so subtle – at no point did I think my casual and growing Islamophobia was genuine racism. The good news for me is that my journey toward the alt-right was mercifully brief: I never wanted to harm or abuse anybody verbally, it was all very low level – a creeping fear and bigotry that I won’t let infest me again. But I suspect you could, if you don’t catch it quickly, be guided into a much more overt and sinister hatred.

I haven’t yet told my wife that this happened, and I honestly don’t know how to. I need to apologise for what I said and tell her that I certainly don’t believe it. It is going to be a tough conversation and I’m not looking forward to it. I didn’t think this could happen to me. But it did and it will haunt me for a long time to come.

Is this a joke? It would certainly be hard to beat as a satirical piss-take of the cliched Guardian reader: overcome with guilt when he realises that, if only for a short while, he dared to think that there might be a problem with Islam.

The author's anonymous, and it's not open for comments - and you can see why. Guardian commenters are not, on the whole, my favourite demographic, but this ghastly drivel would be torn to shreds in no time at all.

If you can't leave a country, then - as a fair rule of thumb - it's a dictatorship. Cubans died trying to escape from Castro's tyranny, in makeshift rafts across the sea to Florida. Not, of course, that that presents any problems to the Labour leadership and their Castro fetish.

North Korean border guards have been ordered to shoot any North Korean citizens attempting to flee the country. According to sources in North Hamgyong Province, two citizens were killed earlier this month while trying to escape across the border to China in Namyang City, North Hamgyong Province.

“In the middle of November, two citizens who were trying to cross the Tumen River into China were shot and killed by border guards who intercepted them. The soldiers didn’t even ask them why they were at the river or order them to turn around. They simply shot them on the spot,” a source in North Hamgyong Province reported to Daily NK on November 25.

“In the past, it was standard procedure to give three warnings before shooting, but this time it wasn’t the case. Instead of reprimanding the soldiers for the incident, the commanding officer rewarded them.”

When asked about the sudden change in policy, an additional source in North Hamgyong Province said, “An order was handed down at the beginning of the month stating that defectors should be shot on the spot without exception. This is being viewed as an attempt to clamp down on defections.”

According to Daily NK’s sources, the incident - involving a soldier shooting a resident without warning - is seen as unprecedented. Since Kim Jong Un rose to power, there has been a continuous stream of shootings, but all have been preceded by warnings to stop moving.

Are Jeremy Corbyn and Dermot Hudson, our very own Songun defender, really all that far apart?

Update: Martin Bright at the Spectator - "We now have to recognise that a major political party in Britain is being led by a teenage romantic revolutionary who just happens to be in his sixties."